


She does not brave the war, but she saves the day

by heavenisalibrary



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1309243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve been here,” River said. Her voice sounded brittle, and he could feel callouses on her fingers. It galled him to know she’d been a part of whatever was ripping things apart, whatever was causing the whole future to go blank, but at the same time it was a balm; if River was here, he could be certain the good fight had had its best possible chance. “You shouldn’t be. This isn’t the end meant for you, my love.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	She does not brave the war, but she saves the day

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: River/Doctor apocalypse fic. They arrive at the very, very end and are stuck there.

He’d been to the end of the world a time or two — thing was, there were dozens of worlds, and dozens of timelines and pocket universes and versions of reality, so every end was just a possibility. Every apocalypse was like a coin; one side was the end, one side was just a new beginning. But this, this was new and this was final. This was it. This was the real, proper end of the universe. He could feel its fixedness buzzing through his system like static, and whereas usually he could close his eyes and see infinity, now he could see only phosphenes. Here he stood on the edge of everything.

Of course, he thought, feeling her twine her fingers through his, she would be here too.

He didn’t know what happened. He couldn’t find an explanation in his own mind, and the TARDIS’s databases here blank. He could sense the old girl growing weaker and weaker behind him, resting on the cracked, grey ground, and he wished he’d had the good sense to avoid this. But then, disaster had always had a gravitational pull to him, or perhaps he had a gravitational pull to it, and so he’d sent the TARDIS flying off to the end of all things with a smile on his face. Figured.

“How’d you get here?” he asked River, giving her hand a squeeze. She wrapped herself around his arm like a vine, tucking herself into his side. To an outside observer it would like like she was clinging to him, but to him, it felt like she was the only thing keeping him standing.

“I’ve been here,” River said. Her voice sounded brittle, and he could feel callouses on her fingers. It galled him to know she’d been a part of whatever was ripping things apart, whatever was causing the whole future to go blank, but at the same time it was a balm; if River was here, he could be certain the good fight had had its best possible chance. “You shouldn’t be. This isn’t the end meant for you, my love.”

He hummed, pulling her into him and pressing a smacking kiss to her temple. “What, I’m not good enough for your apocalypse? I’ll have you know there are plenty of people out there who’d be happy to take me with them to their end, and twice as many who’d love to cause mine.”

She smiled. “Don’t be daft.”

“If things are ending,” he said, “I’d rather they end with you.”

“I thought you’d prefer to go out with a bit of a bang,” she said.

“No,” he said, turning to bury his face in her curls, inhaling deeply the faintest scent of jasmine that clung to her skin, hovering just under the smell of ash and endings. “Common misconception. I prefer a quiet life, me.”

“I always suspected,” she said. He turned to look at her, and in the back of his mind he could feel his connection with the TARDIS fizzling out. The white noise that took up where his ship had been for so very long made his chest burn, and he could tell by the tight press of River’s lips that she felt it too. He must’ve let his face fall, because River lifted a hand up to press her palm against his cheek. He nuzzled into it, pressing a kiss to its center. “You’re not scared, are you, sweetie?”

He blinked at her, and after a moment realized she was teasing him. He smiled slowly, leaning forward to kiss her. Time had gone still in his head, and so he didn’t know how long they kissed; it could’ve been minutes, or years, or seconds, or millenia. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore.

“Never,” he said, when they broke apart. “Why, are you?”

She snorted. “Not a day in my life.”

“Good,” he said, “because the way I see it, we can wait here for things to go dark, or we can face things head on.”

“Oh, well,” she said, batting her eyelashes, “you know me, Doctor.”

“I do at that,” he said. He stepped back and bowed to her, deeply and flamboyantly, grinning at her laugh. The Doctor held out his hand. “Fancy one last trip, wife?”

“I do, husband,” she said, taking the hand he offered.

Together, they stepped closer to the edge. As they looked down, the Doctor had to admit his hearts jumped in his chest. He’d seen many things in his lifetime, but never nothing, and that’s what yawned before them: absolute nothingness. It wasn’t light and it wasn’t dark. He couldn’t even say it just _was_ — because it wasn’t. It was like looking the face of that moment between sleeping and waking when the fact that you’d had a dream butted up against the fact that you had no memory of the dream at all. That sort of grasping and sinking, stretched out to infinity before them.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed each knuckle.

“My greatest privilege in life,” he said, “has been being part of yours.”

He could see emotion welling up within her, and she took a deep, shaking breath as she squeezed his hand. Then, she exhaled and gave him a wink, acting as though he couldn’t feel her hand trembling in his.

“Oh, _shut_ up,” she said, and jumped, pulling him over the edge.


End file.
